


No Surprises

by dirigibleplumbing



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Grief, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Bruce Banner/Thor, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/pseuds/dirigibleplumbing
Summary: Tony (and Nebula) crash-land on the lawn of Avenger’s compound. The first person Tony sees when he steps out of the wreckage is Steve. He doesn’t know if he’s relieved or furious that Steve has survived, too. Somehow, the world keeps going. Tony mostly keeps going too—and figures out how to feel about Steve.





	No Surprises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/gifts).



> I live near where some of the recent wildfires have been, and my town recently spent a week covered in smoke. That definitely informed the way I wrote post-IW Earth. 
> 
> At the same time, this is an incredibly optimistic take on what would happen after the Snap. I think it’s much more likely that civilization would effectively collapse within a couple of days, and that our heroes would have to rewrite reality and/or time to fix it properly, but that level of apocalypse didn’t work for this story, which I wanted to have a hopeful ending. 
> 
> This was written before the Avengers 4 trailer aired. It ended up such that it's actually pretty compliant with the trailer, but it doesn't intentionally reference or spoil it, either. The only discrepancy that can't be explained away is that Steve still has a beard in this story. (This way Tony gets to see it!) 
> 
> The title for this story comes from the Radiohead song "[No Surprises](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5CVsCnxyXg)."

The ship lands on the south lawn of Avengers Compound—okay, so it crashes.

But just a little. There’s barely even an explosion.

Nebula glares at him and says, “You said you fixed it,” but she half-carries him out of the smoking craft, so Tony knows she’s not really pissed. Well, actually, pissed might be the only emotion she’s capable of experiencing, but it’s a spectrum, and judging by how she’s holding up his weight and tsk-ing when he stumbles over a tangle of crabgrass, that needle is hovering closer to the fondness end than the dedicating-her-life-to-wreaking-vengeance end.

There’s a group of people waiting for them, but the first one Tony sees is Steve, running to meet them. “You’re alive,” Tony says, dumbly. He can’t tell if he sounds furious or relieved, or which he’d rather.

“You’re here,” Steve says, just as stupidly, Tony thinks.

“Tony,” someone says from behind Steve, and then—

“Rhodey.”

Tony sinks to his knees. The world tilts, and it’s not grass and brown soil under him, it’s not that viscous alien fuel that’s smoking in the ship behind him, it’s not Peter’s ashes still pressed into the pores of his hands—it’s sand shifting beneath his knees, it’s the smell of gunpowder, solid-state rocket fuel, and Yinsen’s blood. But it’s still Rhodey with his arms around him. So maybe he still has time to make something more of his life.

There are people moving, someone jogs past saying something about checking on the ship, and Nebula is talking to someone she clearly knows, her tone clipped as she confirms that Gamora, Quill, Drax, and Mantis are gone. “How was the flying donut?” Rhodey asks.

“Should’ve ridden with you,” Tony echoes back.

 

* * *

 

Bruce examines him in the compound infirmary. It turns out filling your gaping wound with nanites and then taking the probably-these-are-mostly-antibiotics he’d found on his stolen spaceship isn’t really a substitute for trained human medical assistance. Bruce tries to give Tony opioids, which, yeah, _that’s_ not happening. After that there’s a debrief with the team. It’s only then that Tony lets himself think about it; who’s there, who isn’t. The original team is all still alive, somehow, plus Rhodey, Rocket, and Nebula. His own recounting of what happened on Titan is rote and distant.

He looks at Steve across the table and he thinks, _Why does_ he _have to be here too?_

Then he thinks, _He deserves it. He deserves living without them, knowing that we failed, the same way I know it._

He listens to Steve list off who disappeared in Wakanda, listens to him save Barnes for last, and he thinks, _Serves him right_.

Then he actually thinks, actually looks at Steve, his arms crossed like he’s hugging himself, like he expects to be smaller than he is, like he doesn’t know what to do with shoulders that broad, glancing side to side like he expects someone to be there, flanking him, and he thinks, _God, after everything he’s been through, he had to live to see this, too?_

He must have noticed Tony staring at him, because he draws himself up all at once and meets Tony’s eyes. His gaze is like a block of ice, hard and white-blue.

Tony turns his attention back to what Rocket’s saying.

 

* * *

 

Happy didn’t make it. Pepper did, but she’s not taking Tony’s calls. He doesn’t have Friday check whether she listens to his voicemails.

Last week, he was in his workshop, and Pepper brought him a latte and a croissant from that place on Fifth. Tony had hopped out of the shower and gone straight to reviewing the specs for an engine he was designing. Friday was playing Peter’s latest voicemail, and Pepper had run her fingers through his damp hair, rested her chin on his shoulder, and she said, “Why does he still call you Mr. Stark?” and Tony had said, “Ms. Potts, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” and—

Anyway. Friday says the metadata from Pepper’s phone indicates that she’s fine, physically. Tony holds off checking it himself, but he can guess what algorithms Friday is using; Pepper’s phone hasn’t been taken into a hospital or been used to look up anything about physical injuries. Her GPS pings her in Delaware, where her best friend lives. If she didn’t want Tony to know where she was, she might’ve turned the location off on her phone. That, or she’s too traumatized to think of something like that and Tony’s crossing boundaries again.

He resolves to stop checking where she is.

 

* * *

 

Tony’s fine. His side only hurts when he gets up too fast or twists around at a certain angle or bends over the wrong way. He can still wear the armor, so he doesn’t let himself worry about it.

 

* * *

 

Thor is a fucking wreck. They all are, but Thor keeps trying to smile, and looking at him when he does that makes Tony’s stomach hurt.

“He left you alive to toy with you,” Nebula is saying when Tony walks into the kitchen. She’s sitting at the island, incongruously blue and still on the tall barstool.

“That’s his mistake,” Thor says, and does that thing with his face. “Because we’re going to kill him.”

Tony thinks, _Yeah, this is why I’ve barely left my room since I got back_.

Then he notices how he sounds like a petulant teenager and chastises himself. But now he’s thinking about teenagers, and how May Parker was quiet on the other end of the phone line when Tony told her what happened, just gulping for breath. How her voice sounded when she told him it wasn’t his fault, like he deserved to even _hear_ that, and—

“Tony. Tony!”

He inhales sharply. Thor is holding onto his arms. He’s a little lightheaded and—oh. Thor was shaking him. “I’m fine,” Tony says, stepping out of Thor’s grasp. “We’re meeting in the big conference room, right?”

Thor looks dubious but lets him go.

 

* * *

 

Wong conferences in using magic, and Shuri conferences in using Wakandan kimoyo beads, which are practically magic, except much, much, better.

A distant part of Tony thinks, _In normal circumstances, I would be excited about this. I’d ask for the schematics. I’d already be halfway through taking apart one of these things._

He hasn’t even had Friday scan them.

The holograms gleam, iridescent in the daylight. They would look almost real, almost corporeal, in dimmer light. It would be easy to use them to make projections of people who are gone, to turn out the lights and pretend, like a kid shutting himself in his bedroom and playing with his toys, imagining he can’t hear his parents screaming at each other downstairs.

The sun has been out every day he’s been back. Not a cloud in the sky. Just bright, unrelenting sunshine. Well, that and all the smoke in the air. People disappearing while piloting helicopters or planes, driving cars or trucks or motorcycles, had resulted in crashes, which in turn had resulted in fires, and then, of course, half of all the emergency responders were gone, so people died before they could be put out. And now, with half as many people even existing to take care of infrastructure—and those who remain probably not being up to the task of existing day-to-day, let alone performing maintenance—well. There are more fires every day.

So it’s sunshine, bright and harsh, and a gray smog over everything, a perpetual twilight, not quite dimming the light of the sun but changing the angle, just enough that it’s _wrong_ , which is right, after all. Everything’s wrong. Everything’s wrong and broken and too bright. Happy’s gone, Pepper’s left him, Peter’s gone, even T’Challa and Wilson and Lang, and fucking _Loki_ , and—and of course Barnes. He’s gone, all over again, so if anyone knows how Tony feels, maybe it’s—

No.

Happy’s gone, Pepper’s left him, even Pepper’s weird uncle Morgan is gone, and Tony will never be a father, never be a husband, never deserve to be a father, no matter what happens, no matter what crazy plan Shuri and Thor and Nebula have come up with, no matter that Tony’s already building a new armor and suits for the quantum realm and trying out the blueprints Shuri sent him.

He looks at the mother-of-pearl sheen on the hologram of the queen of Wakanda as she signs off. It blinks out, and behind where she’d just been sit Thor and Bruce, holding hands. Thor’s thumb rubs little circles over the back of Bruce’s hand.

 _Oh_ , Tony thinks, and knows, distantly, that in normal circumstances, he’d be feeling _something_ about that.

 

* * *

 

The next day Tony is working on the arc reactor that powers the compound. It should last for years without maintenance, theoretically, but he’s not about to risk it, and it isn’t going to take much to get the whole town’s power running off it. He’d been starting—well, it was Pepper, of course, Pepper had been starting—to go through the official channels, get it approved by the town board of directors or whatever governs small communities in upstate New York, go by the book when he hooked his free green energy into the grid. But why bother now. The main power stations haven’t failed entirely, yet. But without regular maintenance, these things fall apart. Like anything else.

He’s lying on his back to get to the part he wants to check out next, which isn’t great for the injury in his side, but it’ll just take a minute more. He only glances up to grab the right screwdriver. Steve’s standing in the doorway. Tony wonders how long he’s been there. His arms are crossed, but he doesn’t look angry or big or intimidating. He looks—huddled. Folded up. Like the suitcase armor, neatly packed away.

“What’s up, Cap,” Tony says, grabbing a rag to wipe his hands.

It takes a moment for Steve to reply. “There’s a burrito stand on the highway that’s been open every day since this all happened.”

“Burritos up here are a travesty,” Tony says, because he feels it’s expected of him as an adoptive Californian. “But I guess we have to eat, don’t we.”

Steve lets Tony drive him to the burrito stand. The guy running it isn’t accepting money. Steve must’ve known that, because he’s brought a bucket of the apples that grow on the compound grounds and insists that the guy take them, even if he can’t use them for his burritos.

“No comment about being as American as apple pie?” Steve asks. There are a few wooden picnic tables set up around the little roadside turn off, and they’re sitting on the tabletop of one, their feet on the bench. Steve’s smiling a little. He doesn’t look happy, exactly, but the smile reaches his eyes enough to make small creases in the corners, and probably dimples under that beard, and Tony thinks, _How can anyone possibly look so beautiful?_

Tony takes a bite of his burrito. It’s not bad, even though it has refried beans instead of pinto beans. “I was working up to one,” he says, even though he wasn’t. He knows that normally he’d be teasing Steve about _something_ , but nothing comes to mind.

Steve gives him a long look, like maybe he knows that. The sky is pale gray-brown, silver with rust at the edges, too bright to be clouds, too bright to be anything but smoke and ash. “Thanks for coming with me.”

“No problem,” Tony replies.

 

* * *

 

Days pass. Most people aren’t coming into their jobs, haven’t since it all started, but now, they’re coming into other people’s. Showing up at fire stations. Running toward car wrecks with first aid kits. Setting up makeshift roadblocks and fixing the wiring for traffic lights. Filling potholes, driving shipments of food across the continent, piloting airplanes so passengers can spend time with the loved ones who are still alive. Organizing stock at hardware stores, pharmacies, and grocery stores and pushing carts of supplies across neighborhoods so everyone who needs it gets a share—even people who aren’t managing to leave their apartments.

Somehow, the world keeps running. It’s slower, and quieter, and much, much, emptier.

Traffic is better. Parking is easier. There are the same number of cars, computers, airplanes, tablets, cell phones, all machines, but they’re seldom in use. The food that’s available isn’t quite the same, both in quantity and in which fruits and vegetables are actually present, but it’s being grown and harvested and getting distributed. There’s still news, and some of it even comes from the same people, the same corporations. Each day comes with new announcements of mega-corporations dissolving into nothing—the world's economy is changing, and even Tony can't predict what will come next, especially with his attention mostly elsewhere—but there are also feel-good stories, like the one about a couple whose dog turned to ash adopting one whose human family all died. Mostly, though, the headlines are matter-of-fact, the writing absent of editorializing, like no one knows how to spin anything. One half of a celebrity couple has ended up with her deceased husband’s brother, and no one seems to know whether this is a wonderful happy ending or a horrible betrayal.

New York City is still standing, mostly, and some of it is even being rebuilt. There’s internet and social media and reruns on network television. The compound’s arc reactor is powering the whole county, now. He’s already running simulations to see how much of Manhattan could run on the one that he’d built for Stark Tower. He tries not to think of it as the one he and Pepper worked on.

Scott Lang has turned up. Natasha got a hold of Clint, who is already on his way to New York. Tony saw Bruce bring Thor a stack of pancakes out on the deck earlier that morning, and the smile on Thor’s face didn’t even hurt to look at.

Tony’s working on a new design for the jet boots. Natasha has been sitting across from him for some minutes, watching in silence, before she says, “What do you miss most about him?” She doesn’t have to say she means Peter. Tony tells her.

That afternoon Bruce is debugging Pym’s code for the quantum realm portal, and Tony is supposedly helping. Thor is watching them—mostly Bruce. A couple of years ago, Tony would’ve assumed Thor was making sure they weren’t creating another Ultron. Now he’s trying to decide whether he’s envious that Thor and Bruce have each other, or worried that they’re just going to break each others’ hearts further when they lose each other.

They’re doing most of the talking. Bruce mentions a story Thor had told them years ago, about him and Loki and a game of riddles with a rock troll, and Thor says, “He said the sun would shine on us again.”

“Do you think it will?” Tony asks, without meaning to.

“I do,” Thor says.

Tony tries to share a look with Bruce, like, _How can this guy still be so optimistic?_ , but Bruce is staring at Thor, instead, and he doesn’t look like he disagrees with the sentiment.

That night, Tony knocks on the door to Rhodey’s suite, a six-pack in hand. He’s not Natasha, so his guess doesn’t have sniper levels of precision, but he’s known Rhodey forever, so he thinks he has it right. He asks Rhodey to tell him, again, what it was like, trying to find Sam on the battlefield, not knowing if there would be a body or nothing at all, if there might have been something to find if he’d just kept looking. Rhodey tells him.

Rhodey ends up falling asleep on the couch. Tony gets him a blanket, puts their bottles in the recycling, and closes the door as quietly as he can.

Steve is walking through the hallway when Tony steps into it. “Hey,” Tony says. He wonders if it looks like he’s been crying.

Steve goes still. “Hey,” he says. After a moment, he says, “Did I tell you in person that I’m sorry?”

Tony shakes his head. “You don’t have to.”

“Can we—are we okay?’

“Of course.” Tony starts walking. He’s not heading toward his own suite—the idea of leading Steve there, this time of night, sits wrong in his brain, like it was fabricated at the wrong size.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Tony says, and keeps walking. Steve doesn’t follow him. Tony’s not sure why he thought he would.

 

* * *

 

The following night, Tony leaves Steve’s shield against his door with a note that says, _T’Challa gave me some vibranium to make you a better one, but I thought you might like to have the classic version, anyway._

 

* * *

 

The next afternoon, Steve asks him if he wants to get lunch with him at the burrito stand. They take Steve’s motorcycle. He has a hot-rod red helmet for Tony and makes him carry the apples they’re bringing in a flimsy Dodgers backpack that was clearly a freebie from a game Steve went to. Tony doesn’t actually mind as much as he says he does, though.

 

* * *

 

The day after that, Tony and Rhodey are having their post-workout coffee in the front lounge. It’s too bright, the light from the fixtures inside seeming even brighter than the smoggy sunlight outside. They both tried to do their usual workout routines that morning, with mixed results. The latest version of Rhodey’s exoskeleton is better, but it’s still not perfect, and Tony still doesn’t have his core strength where it should be to operate the armor optimally. His side aches, a throbbing reminder of everything that can’t be fixed, and he might be getting a headache on top of it.

He’s watching when a car comes up the drive, parks right in front, and Clint jumps out. Natasha is there to catch him in a hug.

Tony is starting to think that the crazy plan Shuri, Thor, and Nebula came up with might work after all.

 

* * *

 

Back when Tony had palladium poisoning, there was a wildfire outside of Malibu. He suited up to help put it out. It was over 800C in the middle of it, and the version of the HUD he’d been using struggled to compensate for how bright it was. Cinders would surge up in front of his helmet and fill his vision with gray for a moment, only to white out again when they fluttered off. When the flames started to die down, it was like a pressure had been lifted from behind his eye sockets.

He’d landed on the balcony of the Malibu mansion, elated. Here was something he’d helped with, something he’d done, that was unequivocally good—even if he was still seeing afterimages of scorching flame and felt a little like his skin was singed, though it couldn’t have been.

But the best part was when a freak rainstorm blew in. Tony went back out onto the balcony in his shirtsleeves to feel the warm raindrops fall against his skin that same evening, just when the sun was setting. He stayed out there, watching a pineapple yellow sky slowly turn flamingo pink, like grenadine being poured into a glass of grapefruit juice and tequila, until the rain stopped. A thin, damp-looking rainbow formed over the stripes of clouds, like Tony was looking at it through fogged glasses or tear-wet eyes. The rain had washed the smoke away, leaving the air smelling clear and bright, shot with the fragrance of magnolia blossoms and damp eucalyptus bark.

He’s in a meeting with the team, giving his update on the body armor he’s working on for Natasha and Steve, and he says something about how the designs could be easily adapted for Sam’s fighting style, too, when Steve smiles at him. It’s a real smile, full and warm and utterly un-self-conscious. It hits Tony like a building’s come down on him. He struggles for a moment to remember what he was saying.

Steve smiles at him, and it feels like the rains have come to wash all the smoke away.

 

* * *

 

It really is raining the next morning—if it can be called morning at 4:30 AM, when Tony hasn’t left the workshop since he’d popped upstairs for the team meeting. There aren’t any windows down here, but he can hear the raindrops hitting windows elsewhere in the building, a muffled sound like distant static. His side hurts, but it’s a dull ache, like a caffeine withdrawal headache starting to ease away with the application of coffee.

Steve comes in and sits on a couch near where Tony’s working without saying anything. Tony’s almost forgotten he’s there, engrossed as he is in the upgrades he’s making to War Machine, when Steve says, “No music?”

Tony shrugs and doesn’t turn around. “Didn’t feel like it.” For a few days, Tony had Friday play Peter’s old voicemails, but it made him less efficient, so now there’s nothing.

They’re quiet for some minutes more before Steve asks if he can see the new shield Tony’s been working on. Tony’s surprised to find himself grinning when he agrees.

But he’s not surprised, somehow, when twenty minutes later he has Steve pressed against a wall and he’s kissing him for all he’s worth.

Steve goes liquid in his arms, kissing back, and Tony thinks, _It’s okay to find something to be happy about, right?_

 

* * *

 

Steve finds him again after the next team meeting. Tony has retreated to the lab to study a sample of Nidavelliran metal Thor gave him. Steve rolls a chair up next to Tony’s and leans against him. He doesn’t say anything, just sits there, a solid presence. Planted like a tree. They share each other’s air while Tony goes over the results of the ductility tests.

Tony remembers how it used to be between them. The edge that built up in Steve’s baritone as he grew more and more frustrated. Their voices growing louder with each exchange. How he’d press into Steve’s space, get in his face, thinking it was to make him uncomfortable. He remembers the sound of an axe hitting wood, of shipping containers and airplane ramps being crushed, of a quinjet taking off.

This is just… quiet. Tony thinks that normally he’d be filling up the silence with words, but he doesn’t have any to spare.

A couple hours later, Tony’s run all the tests he can think of and sent them to Shuri to see if he’s missed anything. He stretches and rolls his neck, a satisfying series of pops sounding off in reply. Steve gets to his feet and starts kneading strong fingers into Tony’s shoulders.

“Want to come watch a movie with me?” Steve asks quietly.

Tony doesn’t ask what movie or where they’ll watch it or who else might be there. He just nods. That’s all there is to say.

 

* * *

 

Two nights later, Tony spends the night in Steve’s suite. They fall asleep holding each other.

In the morning, Tony wakes up first, which probably means it’s only morning in the most technical sense, and it’s an hour no one sane would choose to be awake. Black-out curtains are drawn over the windows, so he can’t tell if the sun is out yet. Steve’s breathing is smooth and even, like footsteps marching forward. Tony watches his chest rise and fall. He smells like aloe, mostly, something in his soap or shampoo, and a little bit like sweat and sex.

Tony falls back asleep thinking, _Why was I so mad at him, anyway?_

He remembers when Steve is kissing him awake, some hours later, the curtains open now, harsh light spilling in—but he doesn’t want to. He has so much else to remember, can’t he let that go? But the kiss has gone bitter, like he’s swallowed a copper nail, and he remembers. He remembers repulsors hitting Steve’s shield and the sound of metal scraping against concrete and how betrayal tasted when it rose, thick and sharp, in the back of his throat.

 _But I don’t want to remember that_ , he thinks, and so he doesn’t. He’s Tony Stark, and he fixes things. Maybe they can’t fix what the Gauntlet did, maybe even Thor and Nebula won’t be able to kill Thanos, maybe they can’t bring Peter or anyone else back—but maybe they can. They’re going to try. And he’s going to try to get the rest of it right, too.

He pulls away, nipping at Steve’s kiss-bruised mouth, pushes himself up and swings a leg over Steve’s waist. Steve sits up too and wraps two huge arms around him so Tony’s nestled just right. His side barely hurts at all.

“Hey,” Tony says, reaching up to Steve’s face. His fingers get lost in the coarse hair of his beard, in the broad smile spreading over his face.

“Hey sweetheart,” Steve says.

“How’s it going, big guy?”

“Better,” Steve replies softly, leaning his face against Tony’s. “Better than before.”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t think I would get to have this,” he continues, and Tony knows just what he means.

“You can have anything you want from me,” Tony says, too honest, too much, but Steve doesn’t seem to notice.

“Even if we get them all back?” Steve asks, his eyes searching Tony’s face.

“Of course,” Tony breathes. “Even then. Especially then.”

Steve strokes his hair. They sit in silence for a while, just holding each other, Tony’s legs wrapped around Steve’s torso, a sunbeam cutting across them like a baroque painting. Steve’s hands are big and warm. He glances away and says, “Do you think we will?”

Tony leans forward to press a trail of pecks up Steve’s throat, along his jawline, before reaching his lips. The kisses taste sweet again, like honeysuckle nectar. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t share Tony’s opinions on what makes a correct burrito, but I figure everyone—especially a person who’s lived for a significant amount of time in southern California—has strong opinions about this one way or another. (I don’t share Tony’s opinions about a number of things in this fic, in fact.) 
> 
> I hope Tony is injured enough for you, alexcat! I found that if his physical challenges were too great, I couldn’t figure out why Shuri wouldn’t step in, and we’ve seen how advanced Wakanda’s medical tech is.
> 
> [Tumblr post](https://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/post/181813484457/no-surprises-dirigibleplumbing-the-avengers) for this story.  
> Find me [on Tumblr](http://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/).


End file.
